Professor James Mark

M.Phil. D.Phil. (Oxon)

Professor

Most of my research addresses the social and cultural history of state socialism in central-eastern Europe, the politics of memory in the area during both socialism and post-socialism, or aims to connect the region to broader global histories and processes through transnational and comparative methods.

I have published on the way in which history gets recast at moments of major political change, addressing the ways in which political elites, cultural institutions, institutes of memory, and ordinary people have contributed to the re-imagining of the past after the fall of Communism in eastern Europe after 1989. I have also recently co-authored a monograph titled 'Europe's 1968': it is a work that incorporates the socialist east and Mediterranean dictatorships into a comparative and transnational account of the activisms of the1960s and 1970s.

Currently, I am working on a book (with Dr. Péter Apor) on the impact of the politics of decolonisation, peaceful co-existence, anti-imperialism, and market socialism on official and nonconformist cultures of late socialist Hungary, and editing a collection 'Between Decolonisation and the Cold War: Transnational Activism and Its Limits in Europe 1950s-1990s' (with Dr. Maud Bracke).

For information on 'The Unfinished Revolution: Making Sense of the Communist Past in central-eastern Europe', see yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp It was shortlisted for the 2011 Longman History Today Book Prize, and chosen as one of the 'best books of 2011' by Foreign Affairs.

Research interests

My work has a number of strands. My D.Phil. research, based primarily on oral history, concerned the experience of Hungarian middle class under the Communist state. My current research (which was funded by an AHRC Research Leave Award and has been published as a monograph with Yale University Press) deals with how major political transformations produce new public histories through which social groups may re-imagine their own pasts. For more details, see yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp. It addresses the re-remembering the past in seven countries of the former eastern bloc, in a wide range of settings: political debate, history commissions, Institutes of National Remembrance, museums, memorial sites, and in everyday life, using oral history to examine how individuals' very autobiographies are shaped by the pressures of a new political system. I also have an ongoing project on the memory of the second world war in Hungarian and Romanian communities in Transylvania, which was piloted as part of an ESRC one-year postdoctoral fellowship. I have been involved in an AHRC funded project, 'Around 1968: Activism, Networks, Trajectories': a team project which has sought to tell the story of 1960s and 1970s activism from a pan-European perspective, incorporating the personal experiences - drawn from over 500 oral history interviews - of activists from the socialist bloc and southern European dictatorships alongside the 'western core'. For more details, see http://around1968.modhist.ox.ac.uk/. I am also a National Committee Member of the Oral History Society.

I am currently working on a book (with Dr. Péter Apor) on the impact of the politics of decolonisation, peaceful co-existence, anti-imperialism, and market socialism on official and unofficial activist culture in late socialist Hungary, and an edited collection entitled 'The Limits of Transnationalism in Europe 1950s-80s' (with Dr. Maud Bracke). As part of this research, I organised a conference on ‘The Limits of Transnationalism’ in 2010.

Research supervision

I am willing to supervise work on the social, cultural and political history of modern central-eastern Europe. I am particularly keen to work with research students who are interested in the socio-cultural and memory studies approaches to the study of state socialism and post-socialism, and in connecting the region to broader global histories and processes through transnational and comparative methods. I can also offer particular expertise in the use of oral history and the source bases created by state socialism.